In our narcissistic age, nothing beats good manners

Last week, a 20-year-old student came into my office, looking for work experience this summer. He was so polite — in a shy, understated, non-oily way — that I was very keen to help him.

It was like meeting a time-traveller from the 1950s: no showing-off, just a gentle display of intelligence teased out from behind his veil of self-effacement. He even washed up his cup after I’d told him he didn’t need to.

I must introduce a Teacup Test for future interviewees, to see what they do with the cup at the end of the interview. It’s inspired by the Escalator Test, invented by a colleague at the Evening Standard a few years ago. He would watch interviewees leave our office by the down escalator in Northcliffe House, Kensington. If they stood still on it, he knew they’d be lazy and unemployable. If they walked down it, he’d give them another interview.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And, in an increasingly selfish, rude world, good manners are a superweapon.

We live in the first great narcissistic age. For decades, we’ve been encouraged to push ourselves forward: to go for it and be the best you can be ‘because I’m worth it’ — the loathsome L’Oréal catchphrase, invented 50 years ago by Ilon Specht, a 23-year-old junior copywriter.

Throw in footballers screaming at referees and the rudest man on Earth becoming the US president for four years, and you begin to see how bad manners became fashionable. We’ve now had Alan Sugar yelling at young, impressionable souls on The Apprentice since 2005, the year after Donald Trump started berating youths in the American version of the show.

The problem is that people think they’ll be rewarded for Sugar-style brashness.